A Cheesy Guardian Guide

The guardian is currently one of the most useful classes in DN, does not require large amounts of gold to build effectively, and has a fairly unique gameplay being the only "pure" tank in the game (Destroyer revamp might change things, but there's still nothing as reliable as Guardian Force and it's more of a dmg boost on destro than a tanking capability boost anyway).

Pros:
- Excellent raw movement speed (not mobility, just flat out raw walking speed)
- Highly demanded class in raids
- Low budget
- Easy to learn the ropes of the class to be useful in a party
- Unique gameplay (plenty of people find it awesome)

Cons:
- Low damage and low damage potential even when very well geared as opposed to T4
- Not the ideal class for soloing/farming
- High responsability in raids (it's not hard, but if you fail at it your party members will drop one by one)
- Unique gameplay (plenty of people find it boring)

The unique part comes both from your role and your playstyle. Instead of constantly DPSing while occasionally dropping your support skills like most classes, you're pretty much always focused on keeping the aggro of the boss and making sure the boss is where you want it to be, facing the direction you want it to face, so that your party does the most DPS. This is especially crucial when your main source of DPS is a class like Gear Master or Inquisitor since they benefit from your help tremendously. The other equally important aspect of Guardian's gameplay consists in blocking attacks rather than dodging, on purpose more often than not, in order to gain bubbles to cast Guardian Force for yourself and your party and always have some extra bubbles in case it needs to be refreshed prematurely. A selfish, wannabe DPS saint or physician barely get punished in raid until stuff goes really wrong, while a selfish guardian is what makes stuff go really wrong in the first place.

This is made even more true by the fact that, while every single support class in the game can optimize their DPS without hindering their support capabilities much, with only a few exceptions, Guardian suffers greatly from that, as your main damage per second skill uses up bubbles that are required to cast the far more important Guardian Force. So while Guardian's solo DPS might be ok, in raids you will always keep most of your bubbles for Guardian Force, which will reduce your DPS "rotation" down to literally ONE skill, everything else being much much weaker.

This is mostly why you might, or might not want to play a Guardian in my opinion.

Going to start with a base build, then analyze the skills in detail. Detailed skill builds will come up later.

This is the core of any Guardian build. Spare SP can be adapted to customize it depending on your needs. Some skills that are not taken will be pretty much a requirement for a raid focused build, while for nesting and farming, you get to spend your points pretty much any way you like.

- Divine Combo
Pvp focused skill. However, it does good damage after level 11, so it can be used while grinding as an SP dump. Level 6 adds magic damage and the option to use right click to have a lifting attack with small circular AoE. For any lv90 build, it's best left at lv1. For any pvp build, level 6 is pretty much required for the utility it provides in continuing combos, recatching and so on.

- Counter Blow
Lets you get back on your feet after a knockdown. Must get on any build

- Direct Kick
Pvp focused skill. Range increase at level 6. Not required on basic builds but it's arguably a must have for RDN (level 6 recommended) since it helps a ton in pushing seeds on stage 3.

- Sliding Step
Basic dodging skill.

- Charged Bolt
Prereq. for Lightning Zap. Strongest cleric skill when maxed. Still kinda weak. However it is one of your only viable filler skill so worth using your spare points to max it if you want a more DPS oriented build. It suits my own playstyle on Guardian (very close to the boss) because I often find the time to use it at point blank. It is however not the case for other cleric classes that tend to be more midranged, and some people flat out hate using this skill. Up to preference.

- Axe kick
Useless in pve and pvp.

- Dive kick
Mobility skill. I personally like it, it's not necessary but it's only one point and can help a faster recovery after AE and give some -barely noticeable- extra forward motion that can help getting from point A to point B slightly faster. Up to preference.

- Block
Must have on any Guardian. Aids in tanking and gaining bubbles at the same time.

- Heal
3% HP heal for 60 seconds CD. Consider taking it on a support oriented build, can be left out otherwise.

- Sliding Knee Kick
Pvp focused skill. Not needed and it can actually be hindering if used by accident in pve. Level 6 adds a second downward kick after the lift.

- Toughness
Reduces physical damage taken by 10% (will also work on magic damage with upcoming revamps). Must have.

- Aerial evasion
Basic air recovery skill. Must have.

- Physical Mastery
Increases your max HP. Must max.

- Mental Mastery
Increases your max MP. Must max, both Auras drain your MP quite fast and the MP/sec is based off your MP however every other skill costs a fixed amount of mana so a larger mana pool helps in the long run.

- Mind Conquer
Recovers MP every 2 seconds. Must max. This and Mental Mastery might not be needed with upcoming revamps, which will remove the MP drain off both auras. For now, they're required and I have faced prolonged fights in RDN/RDNHC where my mana did get dangerously close to 0 and I had to switch my aura off, so definitely needed.

- Holy Relic
Filler skill. Taken at lv1 as guardian barely benefits from the physical/magic dmg split coefficient and without the EX giving it more than double damage, it is just too weak.

- Sacred Hammering
Self buff, turns your autoattack into a mace combo (no matter the weapon equipped) with magic hammers dealing extra hits with each attack. Quite weak, suffers from physical/magical dmg split, could be maxed as filler but don't expect great damage out of it. Mostly taken at lv1.

- Lightning Zap
Moderate damage, high CD. Purely magical as Guardian. Upcoming revamps will change this skill's CD to 21 seconds so it could be viable as filler in the future, but not right now. Mostly taken at lv1.

- Smite
Quite strong despite the physical/magical split. Taken at least at lv1 for an extremely useful iframe at the start of the skill, can be brought to 11 or maxed. For pure support guardians that don't stack much STR or attack and as a consequence don't have a too too large difference between their physical and magic attacks, this skill is relatively even stronger. For a well geared Guardian the magic part of the skill will never do much damage, making Charged Bolt a superior option due to its purely physical damage. That said, some max it because it's awesome looking and feels good using it as opposed to lol charge bolt, and even though you can almost cast 3 charge bolts within 1 CD of smite and get more DPS on paper, you might not have time to cast all three or get full hits with all three of them either. So again, up to personal preference.

- Thor's Hammer
Rather unimpressive damage on guardian, can be taken for extra burst but the perspective of having Divine Avatar on CD for two whole minutes just for that isn't quite appealing. Long cast time. Can be interrupted by autoblock or block in general, can be canceled if guardian force is broken. It is still one of the few extra damaging skills at your disposal so up to prererence whether to take it or not.

- Provoke
Allows you to take the aggro of your enemies. Some bosses are immune to it, most are not. Must max for increased duration and lowered CD. For any new players, this is the second most important reason why you're taken in parties. Learning to position yourself in order to lure the boss properly so that your party can DPS safely makes for a large part of your work.

- Armour Break
Pvp focused skill. Good to break SA based objects. Taken at lv1 for prerequisite.

- Shield Charge
Mobility and tanking skill at the same time. Good for pushing mechanics, you can drag an object over a decent distance reliably with just one skill. The -50% damage taken effect is awesome for taking hits, especially those that ignore dmg reduction buffs such as Protection Shell or your own Iron Will. it will always work unlike those, the only thing it can't save you from is 100% sure one hit KO wipes. Taken at lv1 for the overall awesome utility.

- Autoblock
Randomly blocks an attack when hit. Quite useful and it's required to learn anyway. Can be abused on weak, multi-hitting skills like RDN stage 2 suction+spinning attack since with enough defense it will not break your guardian force but it will easily trigger autoblock giving you extra bubbles or a free Divine Ascension hit. Can occasionally save your butt.

- Stance of Faith
Grants 5 guardian bubbles upon casting. Can be toggled on and off during its duration by pressing spacebar, and will only block attacks when toggled on. Core tanking and bubble gaining skill with Block. Can be taken at any level from 1 to max. Does not get wiped by buff wipes. Higher level means longer duration, more blocks, better tanking and more free bubbles. Why not max it always then? The disadvantage of max level SoF only shows up in raids (specifically, RDN since BDN is no more) and it lies in the convoluted process needed to be able to safely run and jump when SoF is up. You are forced to double tap spacebar in order to jump, which will at best reduce your forward momentum by a lot resulting in a shorter jump. At worst, double spacebar is also what activates Justice Crash, so pressing spacebar too fast while jumping platforms in RDN is NOT a good idea. More often than that, even when executed perfectly, the game might still "think" your double spacebar press simply meant "put me in SoF then put me off SoF again" instead of "I want to flippin' jump" which can also end up in disaster.
You cannot tab to sheathe your weapons as long as SoF is active. You cannot change or remove any gear either.
Easiest "fix" to this problem is to forcefully remove your main weapon which is done like this:
0. Make sure you're not in SoF turtle mode*, if necessary press spacebar to start walking normally
1. Walk and open your equip slot (P)
2. Keep walking and right click on your weapon
3. This will allow you to "tab" and jump freely*If you forcefully remove your weapon while blocking with SoF terrible things will happen especially if your idea was to happily jump some cute platforms.
The process can be reversed, keep walking and put your weapon back in. Or you can just wait for SoF to end then put your weapon back in normally. If you're using some special costume weapons (Heroes' weapons, light/darkness/amethyst and so on, those will get removed as well so care to put them back on.
So, avoiding all of the above is why most raid builds do not recommend max SoF. It is convenient but not necessary, from my personal experience level 5 or 6 is more than fine and I'd never go anything higher than that even on pure nesting/farming builds. I like tabbing myself to run faster often.

- Aerial Block
Randomly blocks while in the air. Works like autoblock but you'll rarely see it proc in pve. Has to be taken as prereq.

- Divine Punishment
Skill description is incorrect. It does not reflect any damage, because you do take all the intended damage. What it actually does is hitting the enemy for a % of the damage you have just taken. Which is already bad, but it also caps at 100% of your attack power no matter how much damage you've taken, which makes the skill even more pointless. The real deal is the EX version of this skill.

- Iron Will
Reduces damage taken. Good tanking skill, not much else to be said. In the future it will also provide superarmor, but it's quite redundant in pve since you have Guardian Force, and if GF is buff wiped so is Iron Will, and if GF is depleted by raw damage, you're not blocking or dodging enough. Still a must take as it helps tanking anything that doesn't involve buff clears (and even then you can still take one hit better, before it gets wiped)

- Divine Avatar
20 second long iframe. Boosts your vitality and movement speed. Used mainly for taking on a variety of dangerous attacks, which helps both you and your party tremendously when you as the tank are usually the one with the enemy's aggro at most times. Very good ultimate skill, also a requirement. Level 1 is enough.

- Divine Ascension
Requires and uses up 1 guardian bubble to cast. Can be used by left clicking after blocking an attack on the ground. Second strongest overall skill in the whole guardian tree after the EX enhancement. Must max. Fully iframed, good damage, 2 seconds CD.
Only downside is that it uses up one bubble, so you must be careful not to spam too much unless you can spare extra bubbles and still reliably provide guardian force for your party.

- Divine Vengeance
Requires and uses up 1 guardian bubble to cast. Can be used by right clicking after blocking an attack on the ground. Serves the same purpose as a second divine ascension, but it's weaker and lacks the light element that ascension EX comes imbedded with. Due to DAEX's 2 seconds CD and rather long full animation, there is pretty much no room to cast Divine Vengeance in pve. Moreover, it uses up a bubble and you want to make those bubbles count, so always use Ascension and never Vengeance. Not taken for pve.

- Elemental Aura
Light attack buff. Constantly drains MP. Must have.

- Conviction Aura
Movement speed buff. Helps a great lot at tanking, dealing with raid mechanics and so on. Extra movement speed helps on any situation really, well worth the extra 10 SP. Must Have.

Guardian skill tree

Spoiler

- Autoblock EX
Grants 1 guardian bubble with each succesful blocking (block, autoblock, SoF, aerial block all count)
Each bubble gives 2% STR and INT up to 20% for 10 bubbles, which is the maximum amount you can hold. Must have.

- Guardian Force
Requires and uses up 2 guardian bubbles to cast. Provides a barrier for yourself and the party that grants infinite superarmor so long as it's active and shields you from damage. The amount of damage it can take is 20% of the caster's max HP. This is the skill that alone makes Guardian the only viable tank in DN. Other classes can take care of the aggro, yet no single skill in T5 can provide so much support for the party with such reliable uptime. Arguably the best skill in the game right now on any class bar none. Providing a constant stream of Guardian Force to your party is what makes the difference between a crappy guardian and a decent guardian, so for any new players out there, this is what you're taken for in parties together with provoke, learn to manage your bubbles properly.

- Justice Crash
Applies a debuff to the enemy that makes it deal 20% less damage to you and your party. It is also your only real damaging skill. Given its fairly low CD it's not too bad. Long iframe during the upwards jumping animation. Can be cast from your skillbar or by pressing spacebar while in the air (fast cast, without the iframed rising animation). Can provide extra airtime if used from your skillbar (full animation) after jumping. Must max.

- Stance of Faith EX
Allows you to move slowly while blocking. Grants 10 bubbles instead of 5. Deals extra damage when blocking succesfully. Allows to freely use Divine Ascension and Divine Vengeance by simply left or right clicking while SoF EX is active and toggled on. Must take.

- Divine Ascension EX
Gains light element. Additional attack by left clicking again after the main hit. Additional hit can hit up to 4 times with 20% of Divine Ascension's damage each for a total of +80% damage when it does full hits. Great upgrade, must take.

- Class Mastery I
Gives an attack buff whenever you block successfully. Pretty poor uptime, but it's still a good buff. Must take.

- Divine Punishment EX
Gains a movement speed buff. Also deals damage over time, for the curious it can do up to 42 ticks over the 20 seconds of DP, which is around 3.4k%. Not to be underestimated with such few damage skills at your disposal. Turns a pointless skill into an awesome one, must take.

- Justice Crash EX
The rising part of the full animation skill now does 50% of JC's damage as a bonus. Make sure to use the full cast to benefit from this when using JC offensively. Must take.

- Class Mastery II
Extra movement speed, extra damage reduction. Also reduces Iron Will's CD by 2 seconds everytime you use Guardian Force (barely noticeable). Still a great tanking passive. This with Conviction Aura and Divine Punishment makes you by far the fastest moving class in the game. Divine Avatar to overkill.

This build focuses on damage without sacrificing much of the utility. Can get higher level SoF by lowering either Smite to 11 or not taking some kicks on the cleric tree. This is my personal preference on SoF level, can be adapted to your needs. Provoke can also be lowered 1-2 levels if needed, since max level is only really crucial in raids.

The point of this build is to add some extra DPS to an otherwise poor rotation (how can you call "click Justice Crash" a rotation) with Charged Bolt, and some extra burst with Thor's Hammer for times when you know you won't be using DA.

Not recommended as in RDN the instant burst damage of Smite is more valuable than the constant DPS provided by Charged Bolt.

Alternatives

For both builds, mostly if you're one of those that don't like Charged Bolt
Sacred hammering can be brought to lv11
Direct kick can be maxed
Nothing else is even worth considering as far as damage is concerned

PvP builds

Keep in mind that although I have a decent amount of experience in paladin pvp "in theory", I'm a terrible pvp player and I do it mostly as not competitive entertainment with friends. Moreover, I have done ZERO guardian pvp in t5. So take this with a grain of salt. Let's start with re-analyzing some of the skills:

Spoiler

- Divine Combo
Absolute must at level 6. Huge damage jump at level 11, so if you use it a lot it's worth leveling it up to 11 or even max if you have the points for it (mostly on SB builds). For any build, lv6 is a staple.

- Holy Bolt
Another must at level 6. Highly recommended to make it at least level 16 for increased duration. I personally alwyas have it at 21

- Block (and anything block-related)
Not taken in SB builds. Must have in ladder.

- Heal
Flat out terrible and a waste of 3 sp

- Sliding Knee Kick
Level 6 helps in continuing the combo after the lift, but it prolongs the already long (by pvp standard) anymation on an easily breakable skill and it's definitely possible to keep comboing after without the added kick.

- Provoke
Useless for obvious reasons

- Divine Ascension
When taken, LV1 is enough as it's not spammable in pvp

Lots of customization here. The maxed skills outside JC and Smite are purely up to personal preference.
Can get Holy Bolt to 25+1 if you really want.
Can get Divine Ascension and Vengeance I guess, I generally don't use them in SB

Added block, SoF and buffs. Taken points off various skills but again they can be arranged to fit your own playstyle since each player will find himself using this or that skill for damage and this or that skill for utility.
Optimizing any pvp build is a matter of trial and error and personal experience.

Gear [Work in progress]

Gearing a Guardian might not be as simple as one could believe if one wants to achieve at least *some* DPS without sacrificing your support and tank role. Starting with a brief overlook at:

Guardian's main stats

Spoiler

For defensive stats, pretty much everything is equally important. Raw HP, vitality, defense and magic defense. To simply put it, you should have as much as these as possible. On heraldries, 3rd stat def and mdef benefit guardian more than any other plate, while on jades, fellowship plates or talismans you'd want vitality.

For offensive stats, Guardian has critical issues. Critical cap is extremely important and should be a priority. Of course, given the current cap content's difficulty (or lack thereof) I'd recommend hitting 113k critical with full light jades, which is cap for RDN or at the very least, around 100k which is crit cap for RDN with sniper archer buff. For 90 nests, I'd simply replace light jades with fatals, and/or life jades with wind (or in the case of 90 gear, bear+crit instead of bear+vit)
Past that, high light attack is important, but Paladins in general don't have huge issues with that being a pure light class that doesn't use conversion jades and can self buff their own element attack. So again, if you need a fatal jade or two to cap your critical then do it, it will help your damage greatly.
Past that, there's strength, raw physical attack and agility. You won't really aim for 3rd stats on any of those attributes to be honest (either defensive stats, or critical are superior options usually) but having as much of those 3 as possible is obviously going to help increasing your own damage.

The poor man's gear

Spoiler

For Armors, 90 epics work very well and are extremely cheap. Felis gives slightly stronger stats than Cauda and requires minimal farming to acquire especially if you have multiple characters to do nests/dailies with. Worth the investment as they're pieces of gear you can share with any class so you only need to make or drop them once. We should get Coma gear soon though, so saving sparkles and using Cauda gear then switch directly to Coma will be alright as well.
90 bear jades with vitality are the best choice for tanking.

As for weapons, 90 ones are alright-ish, but decently enchanted 80 epic or 80 unique are better due to the extra def jade slot in which to put 2 more life jades. Obviously light jades on 90 gear, while on 80 weapons it's either light or fatal red jades and life or bear green jades depending on the situation. To achieve the most HP, 80 weapons are always better than 90 weapons.

Do not get 80 epic/unique armors. They're too expensive to enchant and barely give you any noticeable stat increase.

As for accessories, 90 ones are quite nice. Shining or Tent necklace (def cap is 91k in RDN, use which one you need the most while giving priority to magic defense since most physical hits are blockable), Bear earrings, and either destruction or sage rings.

The HP build

Spoiler

This will provide a much bulkier guardian force once it gets fixed, and overall better survivability than 90 gear since your biggest enemies in RDN when tanking as guardians are defense debuffs and burn ticks, for which raw HP proves superior).
If you got the BDNL wraths, you could go for full BDNL, especially if you happened to do the event hosted right before the crash and have a full +10 BDNL set lying around. Honestly, starting from 0 is a fairly large amount of gold, for some gear that will be pretty much useless when ice dragon nest comes out. Only recommended if you already got the +10 headstart, otherwise stick to poor man gear and maybe switch to RDNL armors when you have the chance).
You will need some 3rd stat physical and magic defense to compensate for the lack of 90 gear. 80 plates with those 3rd stats are really cheap, so it shouldn't be a problem if you can afford enchanting BDNL.
This will get you to about 3-3.2m HP in town with life jades everywhere, as opposed to the 2-2.4m HP you can get with full 90A.

If you plan on using Guardian for IDN on a serious party, do get RDNL armors. Again, the raw HP is just too much to skip, and since we will hopefully have GF fixed by the time IDN is out, I'd say a must. Yes, even a tank must put some effort into gearing for IDN.

3rd stats should always be def or magic def on heraldries. Vitality is nice but almost negligible, while defense works better and better the more of it you have. For talismans, 2nd stat vitality because they're the best for your class while being pretty much the most affordable 2nd stat talismans around. My own guardian doesn't have RDNL, however (just to give an example) my Crusader does and putting full life jades on it grants me 3,9m HP with +12 armors, without any extra bonus stat on vit. With 90 health/life plate and some 3rd stats you can easily go above 4m HP as full RDNL. So 5m HP with cleric buff (not even counting genie) is possible and that means one whole million of shield from Guardian Force. Definitely the best way to gear guardian as a tank.
90 accessories are still a must, you can get extra HP from 90 red jades on rings and 90 bear+vit jades are still by far the best compromise between offense and defense, even though you might gain a bit more HP by going 80vit accessories with 80vit jades, you will lose a ton of attack for practically no reason when your HP is already that high so what matters the most is the 5% HP from the jade, not the raw vitality itself.

DPS / Solo / Farming / Build

Spoiler

Simply treat yourself as any other DPS class would. If you wish to do any semblance of damage, L-grades are a must. If you don't have BDNL and/or don't plan on getting RDNL, forget about this section cause you will do no damage no matter what. Unlike most classes, Guardian simply wasn't designed to do damage, so you will have to gear up.
Critical is the main issue here. So for gear, you will want full 70L or better yet 80L, bear jades on every slot available and wind jades on every spare slot, as many as you need to help yourself get critical cap.
3rd stat on plates should be critical. 3rd stats on talismans should also be critical since they're fairly cheap to get, however if you want the best, go for agility or strength. Small amounts of agility give tons of critical to clerics, so don't underestimate it even if STR is your main stat. We don't have DA as a STR multiplier anymore, so it's not mandatory to get STR everywhere like on previous caps.
So yeah, first thing first make sure your critical is capped, and that you don't need fatal jades to achieve it.
Second, accessories. I'd highly recommend 3 parts RDNL (Neck+ STR/AGI version, 2x ring, p.atk version) with a 90 Bear earring (bear+crit jade on it). In the future, you might want to consider lv90 Divine Ascension/Justice crash technique rings as well and 90 tech necklace and earrings with STR so you can slap 2 90 bear+critical jades on them. Do not bother with FD, you will need 3rd stat critical plates and honestly going FD on guardian is just a waste of time no matter how you look at it. Critical (and as a consequence, agi), Light attack, physical attack and strength are your priority. With the current CS items available, as well as 90 FD/Attack plate, a decent FD talisman and 3 RDNL accessories, you can get about 3k FD which is not bad. This obivously matters only if guardian is your main and you really want to get the most out of it, which having mained guardian and got ridiculous gear on it for both 70 and 80 cap, I do not recommend.

Techniques
Not recommended at the moment, 90 accessories or RDNL work better even on "dps" build. However if you want, the only necklace option is Smite, as for Earrings, Heal is alright. Rings, Justice Crash then Divine Ascension/Provoke/Stance of Faith.

- Lightning Zap
Moderate damage, high CD. Purely physical as Guardian. Upcoming revamps will change this skill's CD to 21 seconds so it could be viable as filler in the future, but not right now. Mostly taken at lv1.

Sorry to inform you that you are wrong here. Paladin skills are not converted to the new system (they are the only skills that stay in the old system of T1-4) because they are of physical,magical or mixed nature. When you check the skill descriptions, you can find [in contrast to other classes or the Cleric skills that state "attack" and thus oriented at your highest attack value] the description featuring "physical attack" and "magical attack". So while skills like Armor Break, Shield Charge, Divine Ascension, Divine Vengeance are purely physical attacks, Lightning Zap always is fixed magic attack, the other skills are mixed patk/matk.

As a Guardian thus, this skill is completely useless garbage, because the Guard doesn't have decent matk anyway.

You know that the Auras drain based in % of max MP, so having higher Max MP does increase the drain rate of said Auras. Too bad I cannot compare the regeneration between my Crusader and Guard right now because the p-window info seems bugged (shows 1 + 0 MP reg rate), but I highly doubt that increasing the max MP increases the MP reg rate, and even if it does, I don't think it will outreg the increased drain rate.

Zap is indeed always magical, guess leaving it at 1 and never bothering to check made me think otherwise. That makes it like, the only skill in the game that does that?

As for auras I guess I'll rephrase

MP consumption of auras is based off your mp so if you have more MP it eats slightly more. however MP consumption of all the other skills is a fixed amount, so for those, larger mana pool helps. In raid, anything from Healing Relic EX to Replicatron items will heal your MP for more the more base MP you have.

Well lighning zap toggles electrocuted state, which some other classes may make use to. I personally have it in the second skill bar in order to electrocute krudelis fragments and that kind of stuff (never bothered to max it tho, level 1 is more than enough). And about canceling SOF with the weapon removal, its a rather fast process once you get used to it, so I just max that skill. To deal with MP loss due to auras, I use a skill plate for sliding step which recovers 3k MP every time I dodge, which is great.

Electrocution only helps Inquisitors deal extra damage, but they tend to have their own rotation with detonate so it's not really a factor.

It still does ok damage at 1, I use it whenever it's on CD if I have absolutely nothing better to do.

Its best use in RDN is at DK, since it can help priests out. Even then, during that scenario your first priority is to ensure GF is up so that whatever class can try to cancel it will not get flinched.

For anything else, electrocution doesn't do much. Sliding Step MP recovery is a good option at the obvious cost of a plate slot that could be used on something else. Haven't gotten to gear and plates / techs yet due to limited free time.

Well I never said I used zap for something else than to be annoying to the bosses. And, about auto block and aerial block, notice that jumping when trapped in some mechanic can save your live. For instance, red balls ex, i made the test and yes, if you start with GF on and begin to jump in the middle of the mechanic, you get random blocks and Aerial blocks that basically allow you to survive it with a fair chunk of health left (I assume a guardian would be more than 3M HP to do that). There's not a lot of people abusing aerial block, but it's almost 1/3 chance to block. I personally do not recommend this, as you can have 100% shield uptime while safely on the floor, but if by some miracle you get caught off guard (buff wipe, SOF in cooldown) you can either dodge or do the jumpy jump thing.

About the guide itself: nice job giving this insight into this class. Fortunately, I'm the type who likes the unique gameplay. It's important to know your role in a party, and DPSing can be done effectively with other classes.

I want to ask a question too:

I recurrently see threads insisting in the importance of magic defense on a guardian. If this is true, why don't they use INT jades instead of STR ones? I would not do that, as it would ruin my solo potential and I have more important stuff in which to spend my golds, but would it be viable in a raid environment?

I recurrently see threads insisting in the importance of magic defense on a guardian. If this is true, why don't they use INT jades instead of STR ones? I would not do that, as it would ruin my solo potential and I have more important stuff in which to spend my golds, but would it be viable in a raid environment?

If you are asking about RDN no that's absolutely useless, you can reach the pdef and mdef cap with epic 90 gear .

My guardian runs with full BDNL and fairly low def and m.def and I never died in HC because of "not enough def". Died to failed mechanics but never because I took too much of a beating. you have permanent dmg reduction from your passive + toughness, blocks, iron will, DA, divine ascension iframe abuse and countless other things to tank that the only thing depleting your HP will be burn ticks if you play properly.

The only issue with low m.def is six balls at stage 2 if you screw up, everything else involving m.def you're supposed to dodge it or block it as you're not required on any other instance to take magical hits for the safety of your party. If anything, physical hits are far more common especially at DK and even more so at dragon where you are supposed to "facetank" quite literally in order to not have the boss turn around much and give your party an easier time DPSing.

Magic damage is mostly stuff like permanent mines at jasmine, permanent red area, red ball and so on. you're not meant to sit there and tank those with raw defense as it doesn't benefit anyone to do so.

Capped defenses do make you pretty much immortal but honestly, when you can and often must block most attacks, they're not as important as in other support classes. If anything, I'd rather keep my BDNL and 3m+ HP and give extra fat guardian force to my party.

Just point out that guardian force is supposed to be bugged, so it uses the receiver's HP instead of yours to calculate the barrier, which sucks because my barrier would be more than 800k HP and it looks as if it was a lot less for my party mates. But ye, capped defense and bulk make you immortal. Only time you die is on party wipes IF they manage to kill you, which is not always the case (ty, shield charge, everyone loves you).

Just point out that guardian force is supposed to be bugged, so it uses the receiver's HP instead of yours to calculate the barrier, which sucks because my barrier would be more than 800k HP and it looks as if it was a lot less for my party mates. But ye, capped defense and bulk make you immortal. Only time you die is on party wipes IF they manage to kill you, which is not always the case (ty, shield charge, everyone loves you).

Well its just that devs cant code **** and Afaik it not getting changed, stacking HP doesnt do **** for party's Guardian Force.

Point about using Lgrades in RDN is pretty valid since if you play properly and manage your bubles, you can pretty much deal the damage of a subDPS class, though its not advised for less experienced Guardians. By playing agressive, I have reached 3 Bill Damage in normal and have seen people do 7 or so in hardcore. Not like it matters tho

Small update just to say that with the new techs system coupled with paladin's small dmg boost on some skill, smite lv13+1 is definitely good damage and a must even on support oriented builds. There's nothing else to put techs on in the necklace slot anyway and again, on a support build you most likely want the vitality/defense 90 techs provide (better than healthy/shining/tent 90A necklaces)